Five Facts

Gerald Tebben

Gerald Tebben, a Coin World columnist for more than 30 years, also contributes to Coin World’s Coin Values and edits the Central States Numismatic Society’s journal, The Centinel. He collects coins that tell stories.

Coin World’s bloggers are not edited by Coin World’s editorial staff and blog posts reflect the views of the individual author.

Half dollars: A mysterious rarity

For reasons no one knows, fewer than 60 1878-S half dollars have survived. What happened to the remainder of the 12,000 1878-S half dollars has been the subject of speculation over the decades. The reverse of one remarkable survivor, graded PCGS MS-64, that realized $199,750 in a 2014 auction, is shown.

With a mintage of just 12,000, the 1878-S half dollar should be
scarce but not rare. Ten other dates have lower mintages.

Yet, Uncirculated 1878-S half dollars are worth upwards of $100,000
each, while the 1879 coins, in a mintage of just 4,800, sell for just
$1,000 in the same grade.

The 1879-S half dollar was rare from the get-go. One reportedly
appeared at auction as early as 1882. Augustus Heaton, in his landmark
1893 A Treatise on the Coinage of the United States Branch Mints,
called the coin a “great rarity.”

For reasons no one knows, fewer than 60 1878-S half dollars have
survived. In comparison, the grading services had graded about 750 of
the 1879 coins.

Heritage Auctions notes in auction listings for the coin, “The
introduction of the Morgan dollar in 1878 is part and parcel of the
rarity of the 1878-S half dollars. As mandated by the Bland-Allison
Act authorized on February 28, 1878, the Treasury Department was
ordered to resume coinage of the silver dollar denomination.”

The auction house speculated, “The quickest and easiest solution was
to mint more silver dollars in preference over smaller denomination
silver coins – far more dollars than were wanted or needed in
commerce. Mintages of quarters and half dollars diminished to only
token amounts.”

In 1878, the San Francisco Mint struck nearly 10 million Morgan
silver dollars.

What happened to the remainder of the 12,000 1878-S half dollars has
been the subject of speculation over the decades.

Were the coins melted, with the silver redirected to silver dollar
coinage? Were they, like so many 19th century U.S. silver coins,
shipped overseas as so much bullion? And, if they were shipped
overseas, were they melted, as is most likely, or do there exist, in
some Oriental warehouse, bags of gleaming 1878-S half dollars?

Next: The 69-day project that took two years

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